Companies typically use the World Wide Web to disseminate information both internally, to employees and contractors, and externally, to customers and business partners. This information is usually generated by subject matter experts (SMEs), who are typically people with expertise in the information domain, but who are not usually technically skilled. In order to publish this information to the Web, or edit the existing information already on a company Internet or Intranet Web site, SMEs typically work with technically skilled Web developers, who generally combine Web coding or computer programming skills and graphics design skills. Skilled Web developers are an expensive resource. Moreover, Web developers may divide the coding and graphics arts expertise into multiple people.
Web sites generally comprise a Web server, that serves the visual and data content to the user's browser many times in a format, such as hypertext markup language (HTML), and a file transfer server, that provides read and write-access to the files that make up the visual and data content of the Web sites. While Web servers and file transfer servers are conceptualized as separate and independent machines, Web servers and file transfer servers are typically only software applications, often times running on the same computer. The underlying Web files are usually stored in memory or storage accessible by the computer, and the Web server and file transfer server applications interact with those files in different ways. Web servers typically allow read-only access to the Web files, compared to the read/write-access allowed by the file transfer servers. Because the file transfer server allows read/write-access to Web files, general users are not typically given access to the file transfer server because changing files through the file transfer server will change how the Web pages are served through the Web server to the accessing browsers. Instead, file transfer server access is generally limited to Web developers or those who have some authority over the Web content. File transfer servers typically run a specific transfer protocol, such as file transfer protocol (FTP), secure FTP (SFTP), or the like. Additionally, the file transfer server may be set up on a local area network (LAN), or the like. For purposes of this application, file transfer servers will be referred to as FTP servers, even though it is not limited to running only FTP protocol.
Web development environments and development tools exist to assist the developers both retrieve and edit the underlying files that make up the Web pages. In order to access the Web files on the storing computer through the FTP server, a Web designer or developer is generally prompted by the server access application to provide the FTP host name, the FTP login, the FTP password, and the FTP path. While the FTP host, login, and password are usually the pieces of information that will get the user onto the FTP server, without the FTP path, a user will not likely find the location through which the FTP server accesses the underlying Web files on the computer. For most experienced designers or developers all of this information is relatively easy to know and/or obtain. A novice or non-technical user may know the FTP host name, login, and password, but would generally not know the FTP path; and, without the path, the FTP server will generally not allow access to the appropriate file locations. One solution for such novice or non-technical persons is to track down an information technology (IT) professional or other computer professional to obtain that information. Another solution is to simply hire an experienced designer to make the desired changes to the Web site. However, each of these current solutions comes at a cost of time and money; sometimes just to make a few minor changes or revisions to the Web site.